I’ve been cold before,
I know my gooseflesh well.
Trading breaths with you
beneath a cracked window,
its panes jitter like loose teeth
everytime Jimmy walks his watchtower.
I will sleep in shifts and tonight
I’ll sleep without touching you-
already miles between us, a pushing distance
that marks itself in hardwood beneath
a braided rug that smells of ruin.

I watch you, asleep on your back,
knees bent up and ankles in; pigeon-toed.
Your breath volcanoes up, visible in the chill,
then disappears as if it never was at all.

GRIND IT UP AND SPIT IT OUT, THEY SAID

Eat Your Words

"I know we're not saints or virgins or lunatics; we know all the lust and lavatory jokes, and most of the dirty people; we can catch buses and count our change and cross the roads and talk real sentences. But our innocence goes awfully deep, and our discreditable secret is that we don't know anything at all, and our horrid inner secret is that we don't care that we don't."— Dylan Thomas